I recently had an anniversary with my wife (only two years, hold your applause), and I wanted to get her some interesting stuff to mark the occasion. She’s big into recycled clothes and jewelry and stuff like that, so I figured one of the things I’d get here would be recycled paper earrings. They looked cool and kind of funky like her, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I’m glad I did, and so is she. This is a great way to reuse something old and make something really neat out of it.
For one thing, who the hell knew that you could even do this in the first place? I never even thought that you could ever use newspaper to make earrings. I mean, I’m no crafty son of a gun or anything, but I consider myself to be a fairly worldly type of person and I had never even thought that it was possible to do something like this. Upon further inspection of the process, I felt a little embarrassed that I was so thoroughly impressed by this whole thing, but I stand by my amazement. It’s a good idea, and good ideas deserve an appropriate level of amazement to mark the occasion.
So, here’s the background. The company that makes these Recycled Newspaper Earrings is a co-op in Cambodia. They work to put kids in school and keep them off the streets. The newspaper you’re wearing was actually something that they found on a street in Cambodia. They use a water-based varnish on the paper to keep it in the ball shape– but it’s water-based so it doesn’t agitate your skin or anything. I thought it was pretty great that they were not only helping to keep Cambodia clean but that they were also working to help kids get an education that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. No matter how you slice it, this is a cool little piece of kitsch that actually looks cool.